Cool is working on something that you, personally, find important -- and making progress.
The biggest barrier to that in government is being allowed to make progress, partially because the existing processes have a large inertia, and partially because the cost of failure is so high.
That's a cool job!!!
On the other hand, I don’t have children but like having the rest of the day available, and it’s great to not necessarily be working when most businesses are open. I’d call that freedom pretty cool, especially if you’re in an area where that saves you commute time in rush hour.
I respect individuals who value time with their kids in addition to having a serious career. My father was too busy chasing C-suite positions and running Iron Man races to spend time with his six kids.
Of course someone who has only worked salary without concern for billable time may never have experienced this. But even for salaried employees if your employment agreement says 40 hours, that does not include lunch breaks. Few employers in tech care because bean counting hours doesn't increase performance for creative types or knowledge workers.
I get your point about an article redefining "cool" in a way you don't like but if we entertain what the article is talking about, they mean jobs that have "prestige" and are "desirable" to graduates.
There's no denying that top-of-the-class college graduates dream more about landing an analyst job at Goldman or McKinsey rather than getting hired at a government job such as "parks & rec manager". (A job as a park ranger to track bears may be "cool" but a parks & rec manager to shuffle paperwork around is probably not. A job as a park manager may be respected but it's not prestigious.)
Some government jobs that would be considered "cool" would be NASA scientists working on Mars rovers or NSA code crackers. However, those are not the type of government jobs (because NASA/NSA can attract talent) the article is talking about.
Those jobs are desirable to graduates because they pay lots of money. End of story.
There's more to it than that. I can't speak for the mindset of consulting jobs like McKinsey but for jobs like Goldman Sachs, there truly is a set of people that enjoy finance and therefore, working there or at one of the other prestigious bulge bracket firms (Citi, JP Morgan, etc) would be more interesting to them than working as an "Assistant to the Comptroller of the local city government".
Are there graduates that hate finance and only want a Goldman job only for the money? Yes. But those people are also not best suited for a low-paying job such as "Assistant to the Comptroller of the local city government".
Ditto in tech. It’s been a long time since Google had a reputation for cool. They have a reputation for paying well & being good on the resume.
Ethical and political views of an organization that spies on citizens aside, I think a government organization that open sources it's code is pretty darn cool.
Seeing as how taxpayers paid for it in the first place, open-sourcing the code should be a requirement, not a cool extra.